Please Don’t Touch the Body

Stories

Emily Doyle (Author) , Alice Dodd (Narrator) , Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Please Don’t Touch the Body

Stories

Emily Doyle (Author) , Alice Dodd (Narrator) , Daniel Henning (Narrator)

Hardback ~~$26.99~~ $24.29 Ebook (Epub & Mobi) $18.89 Audiobook $22.00

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Description

Bloomsbury presents Please Don't Touch the Body by Emily Doyle, read by Alice Dodd and Daniel Henning

“A magnificent debut” (Laila Lalami) that explores loneliness and community, religion and repression, and the pleasure and pain of womanhood.
By turns tender and irreverent, the 11 genre-bending stories in Please Don't Touch the Body are thrillingly concerned with the devastation-and power-of being alive today.

In the collection's first story, a Japanese woman finds healing in a secret life as a sex advice columnist after being fetishized by her white husband for decades. In the fourth story, Ronald Reagan is reincarnated as a puppy and must cope with being squeezed, dropped, and controlled by his young, queer owner. And in “Thank You No Thank You,” a young woman grapples with the rules she learned in her religious childhood, the freedoms of her new and more liberal life, and her actual desires as she vacations with her long-term boyfriend.

Together these inventive, emotionally rich stories reveal an incredible new vision and “a writer to watch” (Rita Chang-Eppig).

Product details

Published	Jul 14 2026
Format	Audiobook
Duration	6 hours and 12 minutes
ISBN	9781639736126
Imprint	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Emily Doyle

Emily Doyle has an MFA from UC Riverside. She has…

Narrator

Alice Dodd

Narrator

Daniel Henning

Doyle is a knockout writer.

Debutiful, "Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2026"
I've had the pleasure of glimpsing Emily Doyle's muscular, heart-forward fiction in a writing workshop, and all I can say is brace yourselves. The body is front and center in these uniquely brewed stories, which range from surreal to poignant . . . This debut collection is thrillingly concerned with how we come to feel at ease in - or in power of - our meatsacks.

Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2026"
Arresting . . . The stories are often bleak yet funny, using elements from science fiction and fantasy to highlight the difficulties characters have with communication . . . This surprising, genre-bending collection will appeal to lovers of grim humor and stories that feature characters learning to break out of constricting public and private roles.

Library Journal, starred review
The 11 stories in Emily Doyle's bracing debut collection, Please Don't Touch the Body, vibrate with undercurrents of guilty desire, delicious rage, and the bewildering mysteries of the underworld . . . Motherhood and its discontents loom large in this mesmerizing debut story collection combining high drama with supernatural mystery and characters spanning a diverse demographic range.

Shelf Awareness, starred review
Doyle's evocative collection . . . showcases ghosts in all forms . . . Doyle's debut embraces the strange and even stranger . . . Perfect for readers who appreciate oddities and dark humor with a dash of [science fiction].

Booklist
Surprises abound in Doyle's strange and sublime debut collection . . . [Doyle] brings her eccentric characters' humanity into poignant relief . . . Readers will find much to love in these dynamic and heartfelt stories.

Publishers Weekly